It was late August, 2007. For a birthday present, I was being treated to a lunch buffet river cruise aboard the Detroit River Princess riverboat. Throughout my fifty-some years here in Michigan, Detroit has had several river excursion venues that offered a river cruise, the most well known being the 2 Boblo triple-decker river boats; the Colombia and the St. Clair. In the late 50's there was the Aquarama, which was more of a Great Lakes cruise ship. Lately we have had the Diamond Jack River Tours - departing from Bishop Park in Wyandotte, and downtown Detroit near Hart-Plaza. Now, add to that the magnificent Detroit River Princess, a 1992 river gambler converted to an entertainment dinner cruise venue.

Standing alongside the Detroit River Princess, I was amazed by the size of the boat. It seamed like a 4 or 5 story building dockside as we walked up. 

For those who enjoy hiking, one of the very best ways to experience Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is on foot. Yes, do take the Pictured Rocks Boat Cruise, which delivers splendid views of fascinating cliffs and their brilliant colors caused by groundwater seeping out through the sandstone cliff faces and leaving mineral-stained streaks behind. In fact, the only way to see the most colorful of these spectacles is from the water, so the 3-hour roundtrip voyage is time well spent. In some spots, the colors are so vivid they seem man-made, as if someone hovered above the lake with a paintbrush and hundreds of cans of blue, green, red, purple, and orange paint.

For those who want a closer look at this stretch of Lake Superior and its captivating cliffs, hiking trails run along the entire stretch of the National Lakeshore with several loops leading to waterfalls, rock formations, inland lakes, campgrounds, and beaches. Some trails are short and will satisfy an urge for a quick fix of the area’s natural beauty; others will range from a few hours worth of walking to all-day excursions.

For the City of Dearborn, and in Southeast Michigan in general, the car is king. In the previous century, in an attempt to make room for the new king, the trails once used by explorers and settlers, and originally hewn by lifetimes of moccasined feet, from the tribes of Potawatomi and their aboriginal ancestors, were paved over. In the modern age, this byproduct of progress, a double-edged sword that gives both shrieks of pleasure and pangs of guilt to many of us when motoring our cherished gas-guzzlers along the interstate at breakneck speeds, has begun to provoke a new age of conservation and a return to simpler things; namely, reclaiming areas such as old roads and rails for use instead by motorless pursuits, such as walking, hiking, skating and biking. The Rouge River Gateway Greenway Trail is one such effort, and the trail itself came into existence due to work initiated from organizations such as the Rouge River Gateway Partnership, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, and assorted other government and private interests, in an effort to connect green areas, such as trails and waterways, as well as to reclaim the Rouge River from the savages of industrialization and decay. We owe them our thanks.

Sometimes a picture tells another story. A few years back I was working with this old boy from Houston. When I told him I was from Detroit, lived there all my life, he told me about a discovery he made when he was a young man. It seems our old boy was born and raised in Houston and, like so many Texans, never saw much need to venture across the Red River. In time he took a sales job that found him on a plane, heading for Grand Rapids, Michigan. In January. In the pre- Al Gore 70's. It was cold. Driving to his sales call, he spied some shacks out on an inland lake. When he met with his customer he asked about the shacks. The customer told him they were for ice fishing and he laughed and laughed. He said up until that moment he had heard stories about ice fishing but was convinced those stories were legends passed down by father to son; a real fish story.